Other editions of book A Window in Thrums

On the bump of green round which the brae twists, at the top of the brae, and within cry of T'nowhead Farm, still stands a one-storey house, whose whitewashed walls, streaked with the discoloration that rain leaves, look yellow when the snow comes. In the old days the stiff ascent left Thrums behind, and where is now the making of a suburb was only a poor row of dwellings and a manse, with Hendry's cot to watch the brae. The house stood bare, without a shrub, in a garden whose paling did not go all the way round, the potato pit being only kept out of the road, that here sets off southward, by a broken dyke of stones and earth. On each side of the slate-coloured door was a window of knotted glass. Ropes were flung over the thatch to keep the roof on in wind. Into this humble abode I would take any one who cares to accompany me. But you must not come in a contemptuous mood, thinking that the poor are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, as some cruel writers of these days say; nor will I have you turn over with your foot the shabby horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless, and Hendry weaved for years to buy, and Jess so loved to look upon.

Window in Thrums, A, by Sir James M. Barrie (1889), is a continuation of the ‘Auld Licht’ series. Its scenes are confined mainly to the interior of the little Scotch cot in “Thrums” where lived Hendry and Jess McQumpha, and their daughter Leeby. In Mr. Barrie’s later work, ‘Margaret Ogilvy,’ an affectionate and artistic picture of his mother, we discern that in Jess and Leeby his mother and sister sat for the portraits. Jess is a quaint figure. A chronic invalid, yet throbbing with interest in everybody and everything, she sits at the window of her cottage, and keeps up with Leeby a running fire of terse and often cutting comment upon village happenings, and thus holds herself in touch with the life and gossip which she knows only through the window. Barrie’s sympathetic ability to see how inseparable are humor and pathos makes his characters living and human.

The prolific Scotish author and dramatist J. M. Barrie is most famous for his creation of Peter Pan. Born in Kirriemuir, Forfarshire in 1860, he graduated Edinburgh University and began working as a journalist. Soon after he published his first novel Better Dead becaming a popular writer with many successful novels. After his most famous work Peter Pan he still continued to write on creating many more beloved tales.

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